Holiness, Glory, Integrity

Take a swim, say Morning Prayer, eat oatmeal and toast and pray for and with Turner Jackson who was shot and killed last Friday. Sonny "T" tells me that his mother died this week. Tomorrow I'll join in the Mass for Margaret Brown. My mind goes back over the past year -- the funerals of Gerald Miller, Helen Smith, Louise Inniss. So this All Saints' Day is one of thoughts: a disturbing, ordinary mix of routine and horror, of long lives and lives too short, of peaceful and of violent death. How do you weigh a life? What do we mean by holiness, or glory or integrity?

Art Blakey died this year. He was known as an ambassador for jazz. He introduced the music to many people over several generations. He seemed to have a desire to see people being happy. Blakey was also something of a coach and shepherd for young musicians. The Marsalis brothers, Horace Silver, Terence Blanchard, Billy Harper and many others played with Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers. One critic described it as a "finishing school."

Bill Evans died in 1980. When jazz pianist Alan Broadbent was 15 years old, he heard Evans' music coming out of a shop. He burst into tears at the sound. It changed his life. Jack Reilly writes of being in the Navy in 1951 and hearing Evans playing alone in a rehearsal studio. "I could discern Teddy Wilson, Milt Buckner, James P. Johnson, George Shearing... in this young man's playing. But he was not imitating those styles note for note. He had absorbed them, 'ingested' them, into his whole being."

Blakey was said to radiate joy; Evans to be introspective and private; Ellington ironic and sophisticated. Each intensely themselves, each an original. With very different styles they shaped the lives and music of younger musicians. The Duke had a reputation of celebrating difference. He would find out how the person played and used it as it was. He turned what seemed to be idiosyncrasies to advantage in music. The result of the exchange with these "greats" was not clones, but unique, 'well-defined personalities with their own contribution to offer.

Ambassadors, coaches and shepherds; lives changed and shaped; heritage absorbed and given a new incarnation; results sometimes awful and sometimes wonderful; particularity valued and nurtured; uniqueness in relationship with Spirit, self, others, creation. The Saints are people who have routine and overwhelming problems, who struggle with life yet who taste and show holiness, glory and integrity.

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Sunday after All Saints, Trenton

This morning we welcome Sony "T" Trionfetti, Ronnie Barnes, Jimmy DeSalvo, and Paul Farinella. During the Mass they will play "All the Things You Are". "Dear Lord" and "Weaver of Dreams".